...Individual employee incentive and recognition programs Incentive payments for hourly employees may be determined by the number of units produced, by the achievement of specific performance goals, or by productivity improvements in the organization as a whole. In the majority of incentive plans, incentive payments serve to supplement the employee's basic wage. Piecework One of the oldest incentive plans is based on piecework. Under straight piecework, employees receive a certain rate for each unit produced. Their compensation is determined by the number of units they produce during a pay period. At Steelcase, an office furniture maker, employees can earn more than their base pay, often as much as 35 percent more, through piecework for each slab of metal they cut or chair they upholster. Under a differential piece rate, employees whose production exceeds the standard output receive a higher rate for all of their work than the rate paid to those who do not exceed the standard. Employers will include piecework in their compensation strategy for several reasons. The wage payment for each employee is simple to compute, and the plan permits an organization to predict its labor costs with considerable accuracy, since these costs are the same for each unit of output. The piecework system is more likely to succeed when units of output can be measured readily, when the quality of the product is less critical, when the job is fairly standardized, and when a constant flow of...
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...Managing Knowledge for Innovation: The Role of Cooperation, Competition, and Alliance Nationality Haisu Zhang, Chengli Shu, Xu Jiang, and Alan J. Malter ABSTRACT Strategic alliances play a critical role in global innovation. Firms can overcome resource constraints and achieve superior innovative performance not only by using internal resources but also by acquiring knowledge-based capabilities from alliance partners. In this study, the authors investigate how knowledge acquired from alliance partners affects organizational knowledge creation, which in turn leads to innovative performance. The authors propose that the knowledge–innovation relationship is stronger in international alliances than domestic alliances. The results from a survey of 127 German firms engaged in strategic alliances confirm that knowledge creation mediates the effect of knowledge acquisition on innovative performance and that international alliances strengthen the effect of knowledge creation on innovative performance. In addition, the authors find that interfirm cooperation and competition coexist in strategic alliances and that both factors increase knowledge acquisition, though from different motivational bases. Keywords: innovation, strategic alliance, knowledge management, cooperation, competition A lliances are a central element of most company business models (Kaplan, Norton, and Rugelsjoen 2010). The logic of working with a strategic partner is especially compelling in increasingly competitive...
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...International Bulletin of Business Administration ISSN: 1451-243X Issue 11 (2011) © EuroJournals, Inc. 2011 http://www.eurojournals.com Role of Knowledge Management to Bring Innovation: An Integrated Approach Kashif Akram Lecturer, Department of Commerce The Islamia University of Bahawalpur (Pakistan) E-mail: kashifdms@yahoo.com Tel: +92 63 9240298 or +92 334 7266860 Suleman Hafeez Siddiqui Lecturer, Department of Management Sciences The Islamia University of Bahawalpur (Pakistan) E-mail: sulman.siddiqui@yahoo.com Tel: +92 63 9240298 or +92 322 5172513 Muhammad Atif Nawaz Lecturer, Department of Economics The Islamia University of Bahawalpur (Pakistan) E-mail: atifnawaz_iub@yahoo.com Tel: +92 63 9240298 or +92 314 6864997 or +92 333 3030313 Tauqir Ahmad Ghauri Lecturer, Department of Management Science The Islamia University of Bahawalpur (Pakistan) Ph. +92 63 9240298 Cell +92 333 6183035 E-mail: tauqir.lec@gmail.com Amjad Khawar Hayat Cheema Lecturer, Department of Economics The Islamia University of Bahawalpur (Pakistan) E-mail: khawar790@hotmail.com Tel: +92 63 9240298 or +92 321 4076799 Abstract Purpose: The basic objective of the study is to reconcile the literature on knowledge management and innovation in organizations. The study seeks to examine and elaborate the linkage between knowledge management process and innovation process to dig out the important relationships and flows of activities. Design/Methodology/Approach: The study is induced using qualitative methodology...
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...Knowledge management embedded in social media – successful company and its innovations ABSTRACT The continuous market pressures and competitions pushes the organisation to be in the race of making innovations besides safeguarding the talent and information they own. The race for new products and services for the customers arises due to increasing awareness and exposure through social media. This essay focuses on studying the knowledge management jointly with social media leading to innovation. The essay seeks to examine the role of social media taking IKEA as the case of interest. It aims to further investigate how knowledge management through social media help a company in its innovations, product development and services. 1. INTRODUCTION. Knowledge management has become the buzzword in recent past in the industrial sector. Companies have become very focused on the knowledge assets that they own and the capabilities of their organisation or company and staff to utilize theses assets. Thus, knowledge can be called a resource which could be acquired, exploited and applied to achieve success and advantage for the company (Zack, 2003). However, companies that fail to manage the knowledge it has might surely be losing its capabilities, potential and brains (Denford, J. S., & Chan, Y. E., 2011). The benefits that knowledge management offers ranges from promotion and elevation of unequivocal knowledge to attain efficiency and innovation in various business practices (Durrant...
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...Group Collaboration and Web 2.0 Applications: | Knowledge sharing/retention, innovation and talent management | | | | [Type the author name] | 8/16/2009 | | Instructor Background Affiliated Computer Services, Inc. (ACS) is an outsourcing company for business process outsourcing and information technology services and has more than 70,000 employees worldwide. ACS has three divisions: IT services, Government Solutions and Financial and Accounting Services (F&A). The contractual agreements between ACS and the clients are not uniform. Each contract has specific Service Level Agreements (SLA) that ACS must perform. In the event that the SLA of the contract is not meet on a monthly basis then financial penalties are assessed according to the contract. The Mission Statement describes to goals of the company. The following two excerpts from the Mission Statement are an important to the success of ACS in providing exceptional service to the clients: We will design innovative solutions to meet our clients’ business requirements and deliver only the highest quality of service. We will marshal talented, committed people and create an environment in which they can grow professionally through their achievements. In addition to the Mission Statement, the core of the ACS culture is referred to as the Hustle Principle. The Hustle represents a “can-do” attitude. In essence, the Hustle Principles require above average individual and team performance, dedication...
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...Managing Crowds in Innovation Challenges Arvind Malhotra Ann Majchrzak Crowdsourcing for innovation is typically conducted as an “innovation challenge.” Despite the popularity of innovation challenges, there appears to be a growing consensus that innovation challenges do not succeed at generating solutions with competitive advantage potential. This article presents three ways in which managers can assure that their innovation challenges are fruitful: foster different crowd roles to encourage contribution diversity; offer knowledge integration instructions and dual incentives; and offer explicit instructions for sharing different types of knowledge. (Keywords: Creative Collaboration, Innovation, Creativity, Crowdsourcing, Open Innovation) I nnovation challenges, also known as innovation tournaments and idea contests, are a manifestation of crowdsourcing.1 When running an innovation challenge, a company posts an open call on the Web to solicit solutions from a diverse range of individuals. For example, GE’s Innovation Challenge solicited new technologies for its sustainability product line and a Lego Challenge asked the public to suggest unique Lego products as new revenue streams. By 2017, over half of consumer goods producers are projected to employ crowdsourcing for 75% of their consumer innovations.2 Despite the popularity of innovation challenges, there is a growing consensus that the current manner in which innovation challenges are implemented fails ...
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...“Using KM Tools to Enhance Innovation” Khalid Helal, khldhelal@gmail.com Master of Management, IIUM Introduction Knowledge Management (KM) is a recently emerging approach pointed at addressing today’s business challenges to increase organizational efficiency, efficacy and new innovation by applying several tools, techniques and strategies in business process. The purpose of this paper is to develop the organizational knowledge, knowledge sharing and enhancing innovation to increase the organizational and managerial efficiency. Those activities enhance and develop by the using of knowledge management tools and techniques. Further, knowledge management plays an important supporting function by providing a coordinating mechanism to enhance the changes of resources into capabilities. The knowledge management tools can influence to enhance innovation which is the significance for a firm’s performance. Literature Review A. Explicit and Tacit Knowledge (Nonaka, 2000) Has explained explicit knowledge is proper methodical or organized language shared in the form of facts, like as scientific method, specification and manual. It can be treated, memorized and systematic language”. transmitted easily. On the other side, tacit knowledge is really private and hard to formalize. Subject related intelligence fall into the several class or category of knowledge. (Wachter, 1999) Has explained “Tacit knowledge is personal and context specific, which is often developed over...
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...group of Level Three business students on the usefulness of innovation management and new product development in an essay format. The topic of the essay is “what skills should a business graduate acquire about innovation management in order to advance their career development and employability”. "We live in a society where technology is a very important force in business, in our daily lives. And all technology starts as a spark in someone's brain. An idea of something that didn't exist before, that once they have invented it —brought it into existence — could change everything. And that activity is generally one that's not very well supported." - Nathan Myhrvold, CEO, Intellectual Ventures From a 2010 interview with Harvard Business Review Introduction In the development of new businesses today, initiatives that spur knowledge-based competitions amplify the importance of boundary spanning activities and tactical coalitions, which cause organizations to focus more on institutional knowledge, system improvement and knowledge management (Quah, 2001). This essay will help the level 3 business school students to understand the required skills about innovation management to to advance their career development and employability. An innovation is something that is new. You are required to write a piece of advice to a group of Level Three business students on the usefulness of innovation management and new product development in an essay format...
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...Focus and Methodologies for Understanding Innovation in Small-Medium Enterprises (SMEs) Course : Qualitative Case Study Research Faculty : Prof. Rajen Gupta, MDI Submitted by : Davinder Singh, EFPM (2011) Research Focus and Methodologies for Understanding Innovation in Small - Medium Enterprises (SMEs) Introduction Innovation is a product, service, or process that is new or perceived as new by its developers and provides increased value to user and organization (Van de Ven, 1986). The ability of an organization to innovate is increasingly being considered as the most important factor for competitive advantage (Tidd et al., 2001). Importance has been laid on building innovative organizations and the management of the innovation process with the organizations. This is increasingly being considered important for small-medium enterprises (SMEs) and has been researched from multiple perspectives. The aim of this paper is to discuss, the areas of innovation in SMEs which are focus of recent studies, and the various research methodologies utilized for these studies. The importance to study innovation in SMEs is discussed in the succeeding section. This is followed with discussion on research studies undertaken in this field in the recent past. The difference in the ontological perspective and the consequent use of different research methodologies has been discussed using construct of ‘knowledge’ as illustration. Innovation in SMEs The role of SMEs in a country’s...
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...Customer Clusters as Sources of Innovation-Based Competitive Advantage Vishal Bindroo, Babu John Mariadoss, and Rajani Ganesh Pillai ABSTRACT The authors examine the effect of customer clusters on a firm’s innovation. They argue that knowledge leveraged from customer clusters can help the firm develop innovations. The authors specifically concentrate on the effect of a firm’s geographical proximity and diversity of customer clusters on innovation outcomes. In addition to showing the importance of customer cluster proximity on firm innovation, they explore the effect of customer cluster heterogeneity on innovation in an international marketing environment. They test the theoretical model using multicountry data (N = 288) drawn from the U.K. innovation survey implemented by the Economic and Social Research Council, which collected the data across five European countries. Theoretical constructs operate largely as hypothesized and explain a substantial proportion of the variation in the different innovation outcomes tested. Keywords: radical innovation, customer cluster, cluster heterogeneity, proximity, innovation speed I nnovation is frequently acknowledged as the source of organizational renewal and growth, the primary source of competitive advantage (Porter 1990), and central to marketing strategy (Varadarajan and Jayachandran 1999). Because innovation is linked to superior financial performance and survival ability of firms (Agarwal, Cockburn, and McHale 2006), creating...
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...as the expected. Questions like how does useful innovation happen in an organization or how do you encourage innovation are the questions faced by many organizations in today’s economy. Rather than survive as organization, there is a new strategy to survive which innovation; innovating knowledge sharing and creating within the organisation. Introduction I’m going to discuss how innovation can be used to support knowledge sharing/creation and learning in an organization. Businesses emphasize knowledge management for a number of reasons, one is to encourage innovation. Bessant and Tidd (2007;29) summarise innovation as ‘ the process of translating ideas into useful - and used - new products, processes and services’. Innovation can take many forms but these can largely be reduced to four dimensions of production innovation, process innovation, position innovation and paradigm innovation. They view innovation as a process involving the generation of innovation possibilities, Andriopoulos and Dawson (2009;28). Processes of Business Businesses are continually changing to achieve competitive advantage through innovation and productivity improvements; as a result ways to design and change processes are becoming increasingly important, such process change almost takes place continuously and is called process innovation.. Process innovation has a goal to create processes that encourage innovation throughout the business throughout the business. Processes...
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...organization for their assignments Journal of Knowledge Management Practice, December 2005 Available online at: http://www.tlainc.com/jkmpv6.htm Knowledge Sharing Practices In KM: A Case Study In Indian Software Subsidiary Sachin Bhirud1, Lewlyn Rodrigues1, Pradeep Desai2 Manipal Institute of Technology1, Philips Innovation Campus2 [pic] ABSTRACT: This study is concerned with the knowledge sharing practices in Knowledge Management (KM) for innovation. This paper investigates a wide range of functionalities under the purview of KM that supports different set of organizational activities. Knowledge sharing practices in the organization are also explored for the purpose of formalization and sharing best practices and experiences within the organization [pic] 1. Introduction The main objective of KM is to manage organizational knowledge to create new knowledge. The new knowledge is created by combining existing knowledge pieces or by generation of novel concepts through knowledge sharing. The KM and innovation is linked by knowledge sharing as depicted in Figure 1. 1.1. Knowledge Management Knowledge Management (Davenport & Prusak, 1998; Allee, 1997; Alavi and Leidner, 1999; Hsiangchu and Tsai-hsib, 2000) is the process of managing the organization’s knowledge by means of systematic and organizational specific processes for acquiring, organizing, sustaining, applying, sharing and renewing both tacit and explicit knowledge by employees to enhance the organizational...
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...Dr.Himanshu Raninga Assistant Professor in Economics Smt.J.J.Kundalia Arts & Commerce College, Rajkot-India Economics Of Knowledge Knowledge and information appear in economic models in two different contexts. The mostfundamental assumption of standard microeconomics is that the economic system is based on rational choices made by individual agents. Thus, how much and what kind of information agents have about the world in which they operate and how powerful their ability to process the information is crucial issues. The other major perspective is one in which knowledge is regarded as an asset. Here, knowledge may appear both as an input (competence) and output (innovation) in the production process. Under certain circumstances, it can be privately owned and/or bought and sold in the market as a commodity. The economics of knowledge is to a high degree about specifying the conditions for Knowledge to appear as “a normal commodity”, i.e. as something similar a producible and reproducible tangible product. One reason for the interest in this issue is that it is crucial for defining the role of government inknowledge production. If knowledge is a public good that can be accessed by anyone, there is noincentive for rational private agents to invest in its production. If it is less costly to imitate than to produce new knowledge, the social rate of return would be higher than the private rate of return and, again, private agents would invest too little. Nelson’s (1959) and...
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...different types of innovations, namely incremental innovation, modular innovation, architectural innovation and radical innovation. Categorization of each product is determined by its degree of change in either component knowledge or architecture knowledge, or both. Each innovation cannot be entirely classified into a particular category; it depends on the more domineering change. In this report, it is assumed that firms aim to maximize profit from innovation and it aims to evaluate the survival of incumbents in architectural innovations. Incumbents in architectural innovation The article went into the details of architectural innovation, where incumbents face position threats from new entrants. These are the reasons that can contribute to the stability of incumbents in the market. Firstly, incumbents tend to be complacent and less receptive towards changes after producing the dominant design in the market. For productive architectural innovation to take place, the team has to overcome outdated beliefs as well as existing management systems. This might pose as a difficulty to them as they can be over reliant and be unreceptive towards new knowledge even after architectural innovation. However, new entrants, as a fresh and motivated team, they tend to be more driven to innovate and outshine all competitors in order to break into the market remarkably. As such, having a higher possibility to construct new architectural knowledge and even, radical innovation. Nonetheless, it...
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...Innovation, as a significant competitive advantage to gain profits in the complicated competition, is valued highly in knowledge-intensive organizations. Some former scholar simply regards innovation as the process of inventing new things (Barnett, 1953). Miller (1989) argues innovation is one of crucial elements of competitive strategy for organizations. In knowledge-based organizations, the definition of innovation becomes abroad. It covers four stages: including discovering new ideas, identifying the strategic creativity, implementing useful creativity and maximizing the largest profits of useful creativity (Dundon, 2002). As a result, knowledge-based organizations invest a lot to facilitate innovation. Lee (2002) suggests that knowledge-based organizations are not able to compete in the current global markets without hiring flexible knowledge workers or applying latest information technology to management. Recently, with blindly investing in innovation, efficiency seems to be neglected by many organizations. Efficiency, not only refer to lower cost, but also how to use the existing knowledge, expertise and resource effectively. Without efficiency, organizations cannot plan all the working processes properly. Therefore, in order to survive, even gain profits, a firm cannot ignore either innovation or efficiency (Tushman & O’Reilly 1996). Nevertheless, it is not easy to achieve balance between the two aspects. In the following session, this paper will illustrate from four...
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